Cloud storage systems often use software programs running on cloud storage client devices to upload and download files to/from a cloud storage server. Some cloud storage client devices use a driver to detect changes to files and upload them as soon as the files are closed by application(s). However, this approach can lead to spurious uploading of temporary files that are routinely created by many application programs (e.g., Microsoft™ Word™) as parts of a transactional approach to making and saving changes to files. When network bandwidth between a client device and a server is limited, such spurious uploading can have a detrimental effect on the performance of the cloud storage client device, the cloud storage server and other applications sharing the same network connection.
Conventional approaches for addressing this problem include an attempt to identify temporary files by virtue of their names or file system attributes that can explicitly identify the files as being temporary. However, it is not always the case that temporary files are easily identifiable. Therefore, the identification approach carries a risk of misidentification. The identification approach also carries additional risks in a cross-platform use where a naming convention and other underlying platform-dependent conventions that are used to identify a temporary file may be different and/or may be subject to changes.